"Charlie vs. Goliath"

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Presented by the Appalachian State University Humanities Council. the event will be held on Thursday and Friday, April 19 & 20, 2018 from 7 - 9:30 p.m. in the Parkway Ballroom, Plemmons Student Union, Appalachian State University. There will be a workshop with Charlie from 1 - 3 p.m. on Friday on the App State campus.

Charlie vs Goliath is a feature-length documentary about an ordinary man’s extraordinary struggle to shake up the political establishment. It would be hard to find a more unlikely candidate than Charlie Hardy, a 75-year-old penniless former Catholic priest who spent nearly a decade serving the poor while living in a cardboard shack in a Venezuelan slum. In 2011, Charlie returns to his hometown of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and is shocked to see poverty, hunger and homelessness.

After being snubbed by his congressional representatives, Charlie decides to run for office himself in 2014 and manages to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for the US Senate. His Republican opponent has a $3 million war chest, and Charlie’s advisors urge him to focus his efforts on fundraising. Instead, Charlie rejects money from special interests and makes campaign finance reform a key part of his platform. The election is considered the most lopsided in the country and his friends say he is “tilting at windmills.” But Charlie is convinced he will triumph even with all the cards stacked against him. A 21st century Don Quixote, Charlie galvanizes a ragged band of young volunteers determined to make waves in Wyoming’s elections, and in so doing set a precedent for the rest of the country.

The film provides an intimate portrayal of this resolute and uniquely charismatic septuagenarian while revealing an inside look at a campaign fueled by hope rather than money. Challenging the belief that our political process is fair and democratic, Charlie vs Goliath explores the question of how an honest and sincere person without money can make a difference running for higher office, and more broadly, whether, in the spirit of Don Quixote, it is worth fighting an unbeatable foe and dreaming an impossible dream.